High Speed Photography

Fascinated from pictures on the internet I decided to build a high-speed photography rig on the cheap.

The whole thing costed less than £5 and it's pretty functional.

I calculated the time a water drop should take to hit the ground by falling from 1 meter of distance. Accordingly to my calculations it should be around 102ms in the void. Now here we got air and weight counts too...but I'm going to figure the exact time by trial and fail. So in the end it should be slightly more than 102ms but not too much anyway I would guess.

I built some circuitry and interfaced it with my Arduino, the whole thing should be able to track when the laser gets crossed by the water drop, immediately cut off the power of the laser (so it's light won't interfere with the picture) and put the camera in focus status, wait for the water drop to be in position (with a short timer) and shoot.

The script is almost completed; just need to regulate the light sensor and interface the whole thing with the laser. Can't wait :)

I used an UV filter to protect the lenses from water spillage but also to reduce light reflections from the water, have got a new one as I "destroyed" the previous one for my macro flash ring (still waiting on leds to complete that one...could be sort of useful for this thing too now ).

Here's some pictures so far :)

The setup I used:

On a side note I found a microwave oven in the trash and I'm scavenging it for spare parts, will probably build a Jacob's Ladder and picture it in different ways (should be interesting enough...and fun too).

Another take on HDR and Lightpainting

The hard part of lightpainting (yes, this has been done with the newly arrived finger leds) is that you don't really know what the final result will be until you see it. Writing stuff in the air can cause a lot of confusion, especially when you try to not overlap what you already did.

First time lapse video

Using the recently arrived and modified timer I shot my first time lapse video.

This is the first part of the process to create my macro flash ring, couldn't continue further in making it as I am still missing some parts :)

Time lapse timer reworked

After making a few tests I figured out an easy way to fix the incompatibility between Achim's timer for time lapse photography and my Nikon D3100 (I swear this fix would make the timer work on a D90 too).
I basically soldered the timer inside the remote shutter button, this way the PIC is able to capture straight away the focus and shoot triggers and then repeat for the future. Works like a charm :)

I decided to keep the jack plug soldered as there was enough room in the plastic case.

Another way around is to add one or two external buttons, you have to make it so the GND wire first touches the "focus" wire then then "shoot" wire and then they are released together.

To stop the timer (as Achim says), just press the button halfway to hit the "focus" wire but don't hit the "shoot" wire, wait a few seconds and it'll shop running :)

Finally some stuff arrived!

No sight of the tripod yet but today the UV filter (which I'll rework in a Flash Ring for macro pictures) arrived, together with the so called finger leds, manual shutter (which I reworked cutting the cable and using a jack to split it) and time lapse timers (you see those small male jacks? They're inside there).
Unfortunately after reworking the manual shutter button, turned out those time lapse timers aren't compatible with my camera :(

Thankfully I had some spare parts laying around and my Arduino 2009 came to aid me.

A few relays, resistors, diodes and transistors and a few lines of code and ta-daaaa time lapse timer working and fully customizable from pc (yeah, it's quite "static" but it works).

Playing with light and exposure again

Found a reliable and powerful light source (while waiting for the finger leds) in a crappy led key-chain. Also made an experiment with the Holo-Paint iPad App :D

Interfacing with computers

They say a good computer technician is one who can get in along with computer in an extremely good way...do you think this is enough?

Note: No Photoshop or picture editing involved.

Playing Cards...

I got bored, so I started playing cards...but I was alone....oh right...time to ask my evil twin to play with me :)

Long and Multiple exposures

Played with long exposures and multiple exposures :)

HDR picture: second try

Here's my second try, need more coloured lights, can't wait to receive those finger leds and start placing them around :)

Today we fly!

It was time to try new stuff with my camera...so today I decided to start flying :)

Lightpainting

This was my first try. Me and my house mate were running in circles holding glowing sticks in our hands. I am looking forward to improve this soon. A tripod should get here in these days and some finger leds too :)

HDR picture: first attempt

Here's my first take on HDR pictures, it's not too bad for a first one in my opinion but I want to try something more now. Will wait for a good sunset to picture in HDR and see how it goes :)

Wide Angle and Macro lens arrived!

Finally the Wide Angle and Macro lens arrived :)

I also opened (thankfully not scratching the lens) the wide angle one and flipped it upside down; it allowed me to create a sort of "fisheye" distorted pictures but I wasn't overly impressed so I just turned the lens back as it was.

Here's some pictures.

Wide Angle Normal Way:

Reversed Wide Angle lens:

Macro lens:

I ordered a few led rings which I will assemble attached to an UV Filter Lens (will probably destroy the filter in the process) to create a flash ring in order to remove the shadows from the macro pictures :)